Growth Hacker’s Guide To Conversion Rate Optimization: What To Test

If you’ve been following along with our series on Conversion Rate Optimization, you now know all about the benefits of CRO, how to collect data and plan your tests, and what to be mindful of when running them and assessing results.

In this post, we’ll take a more indepth look at the specific website components worth testing. Use these suggestions as a guide and remember that this list is by no means exhaustive; it’s just a place to start.

Calls to action – This is one of the most important pieces of landing page content to test because it often initiates user’s journey from landing page to conversion. Experiment with different messaging — “Learn More” vs. “Buy Now” vs. “Shop Now”, etc.

Content – This term is general, and often applies to every component of your landing page. In this instance, I’m referring to text content. One thing to be careful of is having too much of it. Users need to be able to easily digest your landing page in a matter of seconds. This is not often accomplished by having to wade through large amounts of block text. You want your landing page content to contain only the minimum amount of information necessary to communicate the purpose of your page.

Inventory Arrangement – Experiment with how you arrange your inventory on landing pages, both in terms of which products you lead with and feature, as well as which product images you use.

Pricing – If you know you’re out-pricing your competitors on certain items, use that to your advantage and feature those products prominently.

Discounts – Any opportunity to feature discounts should be taken advantage of. It’s long been understood by marketers that users have a very positive physiological reaction to any opportunity to get something for less than it usually costs. Discounts can relate to product pricing, shipping deals, etc.

Ad Messaging:

Consistency and Continuity – Make sure your ads are consistent with the landing pages to which they lead. This is important both in terms of brand consistency — messaging style and design, as well as content consistency — making sure products featured in ads are also featured on landing page, keeping shipping and pricing information consistent between the two, and only running ads for items that are currently in stock.

Testing Ad Variables In Isolation – This is more of a best practice than a component to test, but it bears mentioning. As we discussed in our recent post regarding the testing of website elements, make sure you’re only testing a single variable at a time to ensure that you know which variable made the difference in performance at the end of your test.

Checkout Process:

Removing Unnecessary Fields – This is a big one. Your checkout funnel is a very sensitive sequence. It should not contain anything which is unnecessary to the user completing their purchase! You want this process to be as simple and streamlined as possible. Even small extra tasks that require of your users can have a significant effect on conversion rates.

Removing Sign-In Requirements – If it’s possible to remove this requirement, you should. Users don’t want to be forced to sign-in or create an account in order to complete their purchase. This is possibly the single most significant change you can make improve conversion rates.

Make Forms Appealing – Make sure that your lead generation forms are easy to fill out and are visually appealing. One common issue with this comes from embedding a third party template into a contact page without regard for the lack of visual consistency between the page and the form.